During the installation of hinges on shutters of doors and machinery, such as access doors or the like, an operator can often find he has to adjust the relative position of the fasteners, such as anchoring screws or the like, with respect to the hinge axis. Such a need may arise for example when, during mounting, it is necessary to compensate for drilling mistakes, minimal misalignments, and/or angular positions of the shutter with respect to the frame post. In any case, there may be various other cases in which precise and secure hinge adjustment becomes a necessity.
Thus, various devices have been used in order to accomplish a hinge capable of meeting the operator's requirements in terms of speediness and versatility during hinge adjustment.
In particular, hinges have been manufactured providing through-holes for anchoring fasteners, screws, or the like on the hinge members, in correspondence of housing seats of flanged adjusters, and suitably shaped to allow a predetermined freedom of movement within said seats. The adjusters in turn have a through-hole wherein the anchoring screw substantially engages without play. This device enables the operator to arrange the screws more easily, and consequently more accurately, for anchoring the hinge in its working position, and to then move the adjuster-and-screw assembly with respect to its housing seat on the hinge, in order to accurately adjust the relative position of the shutter with respect to the post.
These known hinges, however, have the drawback of tending to become dislodged under the weight of the shutter, which are often heavy metal cabinet doors, and of hence losing their accurately adjusted original position.
In order to solve this problem it has already been suggested, in particular in EP 0991836, to manufacture in the hinge elliptically-shaped housing seats, wherein equally-elliptical through-holes are provided. The longer axis of seats and holes are arranged parallel or perpendicularly to the hinge axis. With each of these seats there is associated a flanged adjuster, itself having an elliptical base, of such a size to be able to be housed within the elliptical seat, free to move along the main axis thereof. Finally, in order to ease the stable mutual engagement between the housing seat and the adjuster, poly-grooved areas are provided perpendicular to said longer axis, on the surfaces thereof in mutual contact.
This hinge has the advantage of accomplishing an effective and stable hinge anchoring, once it is adjusted in an exact position, thanks to the mutual interlocking of the poly-grooved areas. However, it has the serious disadvantage that the adjuster movement may occur in only one predefined direction, which is the one determined by the arrangement of the housing seat, parallel or perpendicular to the hinge axis, at the time of hinge manufacture. This seriously limits the freedom of movement of the adjuster with respect to the hinge and hence the opportunity for accurate adjustment. Consequently, the manufacturer is forced to manufacture various types of hinges, which the operator will use at pleasure for any intervention he is going to perform, with evident problems in terms of costs and stocking.
In order to try and better solve this problem, another hinge available on the market provides to manufacture circular-base housing seats. On the bottom surface of the circular-based housing seats a widened through-hole is drilled, shaped for example as a square with rounded corners. An equally circular-base, flanged adjuster having, however, a smaller diameter cooperates with this seat, and said adjuster is free to move in any direction and hence also to perform a rotary movement within its respective seat. On the surfaces in mutual contact, poly-grooved areas are equally formed, which, however, in this case are cross-shaped. The shaping on the one hand of the seat and of the through-hole, and on the other of the adjuster base, allows to remarkably improve adjustment freedom. As a matter of fact, the adjuster can move both in the vertical plane and in the horizontal one. However, it cannot be engaged firmly and securely, since the poly-grooved areas do not match (i.e. they do not interlock in all positions). This is true in particular if the adjusters are accidentally rotated—as may easily occur—and consequently the engagement of the poly-grooved areas occurs in a mutually oblique position.
The object of the present invention is to provide a single type of hinge which, however, can be adjusted in a direction chosen among at least two predefined directions, preferably either horizontally or vertically, according to the requirements of the moment, and which has engagement means capable of providing a secure and stable anchoring of the adjuster in the respective housing seat thereof, in various chosen positions.
Such object is obtained by means of a hinge with the features described and claimed herein, or the equivalents thereof.